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Monday, November 5, 2012

Postcrossing: Portugal

It took a bit of digging, as most of the information I could find was in Portuguese, but I finally tracked down where the quote on this card is from. Delmar Domingos De Carvalho is a Portuguese philosopher and member of the Rosicrucian Fellowship, an international association of Christian mystics. The highlighted quote on the left reads

Solidarity? No and yes. Fraternity? Yes.

The smaller quote text reads (according to Google Translate):

The time shall come, sooner than many think, when the word fraternity and brotherly dynamics will be increasingly widespread, and in time universal, with a force and activity that definitively replaces solidarity.

It's a really interesting choice of card to me, and I enjoyed doing a bit of research into the source.

On the back:

Hello greetings from a very hot autumn Sunday afternoon in Portugal. My favorite quote is from a poem by Fernando Pessoa: "Oh sacred sea, how much of your salt are tears from Portugal?" Happy Postcrossing.

Bonus quote! I'm ashamed to admit that I hadn't heard of Fernando Pessoa, who is apparently one of the most famous Portuguese poets and philosophers. I really liked that this card made me think and research and wasn't just something cute, and that the sender had read my bio and sent me a quote like I ask.

2 comments:

I love that poem from Fernando Pessoa, although the translation should read "salty sea", instead of "sacred sea". The poem is called "Portuguese sea", and it talks about the Portuguese sea expansion. The whole poem goes like this:

"Oh salty sea, how much of your saltAre tears of Portugal!To get across you, how many mothers cried,How many sons prayed in vain!

How many brides were never to marryIn order to make you ours, oh sea!Was it worth it? Everything is worthyIf the soul is not small.

Who wants to go beyond Bojador,Must go beyond sufferance.God gave the sea peril and abyss,Yet upon it He also mirrored the sky."